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Microsoft kills off Kinect, stops manufacturing it
Microsoft is finally admitting Kinect is truly dead. After years of debate over whether Kinect is truly dead or not, the software giant has now stopped manufacturing the accessory. Fast Co Design reports that the depth camera and microphone accessory has sold around 35 million units since its debut in November, 2010. Microsoft's Kinect for Xbox 360 even became the fastest-selling consumer device back in 2011, winning recognition from Guinness World Records at the time.
In the years since its debut on Xbox 360, a community built up around Microsoft's Kinect. It was popular among hackers looking to create experiences that tracked body movement and sensed depth. Microsoft even tried to bring Kinect even more mainstream with the Xbox One, but the pricing and features failed to live up to expectations. Microsoft was then forced to unbundle Kinect from Xbox One, and produced an unsightly accessory to attach the Kinect to the Xbox One S. After early promise, Kinect picked up a bad name for itself.
Kinect technology lives on in products such as HoloLens, Windows Hello cameras, and "Mixed Reality" headsets.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Ethanol-fueled on Thursday October 26 2017, @02:32PM (2 children)
I use one(v2) for work, and considering it's 250 bucks on ebay it's pretty goddamn awesome for what it is, here at Boston Dynamics we use it for rapid-prototyping and eventually fine-tune algorithms for use with stereocameras and other things. The V2 also has a snazzy phased microphone array and libraries and dictionaries for speech recognition such that it can detect the beam angle (player) who is talking. You could develop a live 2-player version of Jeopardy or something.
Programmatically detecting skeletons, depth, joints, and gestures is ridiculously piss-easy and the default unit of distance is actual meters rather than cryptic unprojected/unscaled XYZ stuff (though you can still use all that, there are a lot of projections and transformations available). It can even be used as a non-invasive heartbeat detector through clothing. The major downside is that it is impossible to get it to work without all the official Microsoft garbage requirements. Sure, there are examples to get it working with Python or Processing with most of its features crippled, but good luck actually getting them to work. I wasted weeks of effort before I gave up and went the C# route.
What the wiser trend is to use mono or stereocameras with OpenCV, especially stereocameras because you can ascertain depth much more easily from a disparity map (and also with waaaaaaay less resolution than a Kinect V2). However, of course going the OpenCV route is more figuring shit out from scratch and reinventing the wheel because all the academics, art consultants, and robotics firms who spent all those blood, sweat, and tears getting their shit up and running aren't about to let freeloaders benefit from their hard work without paying the price. And of course having to deal with OpenCV's skeletal documentation and online examples is the usual retardation you see in the computer science world.
Ha. Hahahahahaha. Ahhhhh-HAAAAAA--HAWWWWWW!
(Score: 3, Informative) by richtopia on Thursday October 26 2017, @03:44PM
I suspect this may be part of the problem. The hardware is pretty awesome for the price, and I suspect Microsoft was either selling at cost or a loss. For video games that makes sense, as games are supposed to be the primary revenue stream.
I personally have fiddled with 3d scanning with the Kinect, although I was using the first generation and the resolution is clearly designed for human sized objects. For most items I want to 3d print they are hand held so the Kinect was not sufficient, but still a very cool tech demo.
http://skanect.occipital.com/ [occipital.com]
(Score: 2) by Rivenaleem on Friday October 27 2017, @03:29PM
So this is how it happens. Anyone wondering why the robots rise up and murder us all finally have their answer. Ethanol-fueled works at Boston Dynamics.